The Gipsy's Baby

by Rosamond Lehmann

  So we accompanied them to the bottom gate, and bade them good-bye.

  The visit had been a success. Yet for the rest of the day I felt depressed. I wished never to have known the Wyatts.

  A few days afterwards, Sylvia told me that the Wyatts wished to come to tea.

  ‘Did you ask them?’ I said.

  ‘No—they asked themselves.’

  ‘I don’t really want them much. Do you?’

  ‘I don’t mind. Anyway I’ve told them they can come.’

  ‘I think Isabel might be cross.’

  ‘I shall ask Dad. If he says yes, she’ll have to.’

  A stubborn sense of obligation was driving her, I could see. Her feelings about the Wyatts were undoubtedly purer, warmer than mine; but in her too, I think, they were beginning to get muddied. Uneasiness was creeping over both of us. We had got what the Wyatts wanted; sense of guilt deprived us of any concentration of forces such as theirs to oppose to them; Jannie had killed their Fluff. We were at their mercy.

  That evening Sylvia said: ‘Dad, can I have some children to tea?’—and of course he said: ‘Yes, my pet,’ and inquired no further. So when next morning at breakfast Sylvia announced: ‘Dad says we can have the Wyatts to tea,’ some flouncing movements were the only outward signs of revolt that Isabel could permit herself.

  ‘Oh, indeed, by all means, have the whole lot in,’ she said sweetly. She rattled the crockery on to the tray, and added what I had been waiting for: ‘And the crossingsweeper’s family, do, by all means.’ This relieved her feelings, and she added with only normal tartness: ‘I suppose you’ve got round your father again to allow it.’

  She went out with the tray, and no doubt told them downstairs that next time she’d speak her mind. She was having a bit of an off-day, unfortunately; but also I suspect that the previous visit had been condemned in the servants’ hall. The Wyatts had a very low local reputation.

  That afternoon Maudie, Horace, Chrissie came to tea. Their hands and faces showed signs of scrubbing, and they were dressed for the occasion. Maudie wore a strange box-pleated dress of violet alpaca, made originally for a far larger and fuller frame. It lent a saffron tinge to her sallow complexion. Chrissie, in a discoloured scrap of pallid Jap silk, had almost lost her personality.

  I had expected them to fall on their food and stuff it down with both fists, after the manner of the ravenous in fiction, but they seemed uninterested in tea. I wondered—so full of surprises are people’s home lives—if possibly they were accustomed to daily feasts of cream buns and iced cake, and were utterly disgusted by our simple fare. They chewed without appetite at a slice of bread and butter each, and refused ginger-bread, and clearly gave Isabel the pip by their unnatural abstraction from the board. I could hear the caustic comments she was not expressing. Nothing is so likely to produce hatred and contempt in a hostess as distaste manifested at table by her visitors; and when the latter are a trio of despicable, scrubby, under-nourished little brats, the feeling must be deeply intensified. I suppose one factor was that they were so unaccustomed to the ordinary diet of childhood or indeed to regular meals of any sort that they had become more or less indifferent to food. I have often noticed how much less greedy children of the proletariat are than others. One would imagine that they would be more absorbed in the problem of stoking up than the pampered young of the middle and upper classes; but it is not so. They are spare and delicate of appetite, extremely cautious of experimenting, and seem not to wish to stuff themselves even when there is a real opportunity for a blowout. But when I look back, I see that as regards this particular tea-party it was excess of emotion that deprived the Wyatts of all appetite. At last they had compassed their objective: they had come to tea.

  Everybody was quite silent. This time Isabel did not help. It was a relief when the meal was over. Chrissie scuttled to the musical box, Horace to the rocking-horse. Maudie lingered about, looking apathetically at various objects. As soon as Isabel had gone out with the tray, she said to me in her dull voice:

  ‘Where does your mother keep her dresses and that, then?’

  My heart sank.

  ‘Oh, some in her room, some in the cupboard in the passage.’

  ‘Let’s have a look at them, then.’

  Feeling dishonoured and sensing doom, I led the way to my mother’s bedroom. I came to the door which since her departure I had not found courage to open; and desolation swamped me as I turned the handle. There was the shrine, empty, its fresh chintzes as if frozen beneath a film of thin green ice, the bed shrouded, the gleaming furniture, the cut-glass bottles, the photographs, the pastel drawing of three little girls in white frocks and blue sashes—ourselves—speaking at me with cold, mourning, minatory voices. All her possessions had become taboo. This was desecration. I loathed Maudie.

  ‘Ain’t she got any velvets, then?’ said the relentless voice.

  ‘She’s taken all her best frocks to America,’ I said. ‘I think everything’s locked, anyway. We’d better go back to the nursery.’

  ‘Go on. Try.’

  Fearing she was about to lay hands upon the cupboard, I sprang towards it, and at my touch the carved olive wood door yawned open with a soft complaint, and revealed the long attenuated draperies of various garments hanging down.

  ‘That’s her black velvet tea gown,’ I said, touching it hurriedly.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Maudie, pointing.

  ‘That’s an evening dress. It’s got silver water lilies on.’

  ‘Let’s see it, then.’

  I took down the green and silver brocade on its hanger, and laid it out on the couch.

  ‘Ain’t that ’er best, then?’

  ‘It’s one of her best, but she didn’t take it because sea journeys tarnish silvery things.’

  For a few moments, pride of showmanship overcame my nausea. If I had to go through with it, at least I could tell myself I had done Maudie proud. The dress flowed along the couch, a glittering delight. It was my particular favourite, appearing in my imagination as a sort of transformation scene—a magic pool, a fairy ring in an enchanted wood. I glanced at Maudie, and saw in her eye the same gloating point heightened now to an inexpressible degree. It was the look of someone in a trancelike state of obsession.

  It was at this moment that Isabel swept in upon us. The rest is lost in horror and humiliation. We were driven back to the nursery, and the Wyatts were told it was high time to get along home. Off they bundled, noiseless, wary, unresisting. Through a mist, I saw Chrissie in the doorway break from formation, dart back to the musical box, make as if to pick it up, snatch her hands off it, dart back, dumb, to Maudie’s side again. Afterwards I was enveloped in a whirlwind of scolding. Explanation was fruitless; I did not attempt it.

  That night in bed I wept myself to a pulp and knew that my mother would die in America and that it would be entirely my fault; and nobody came magically to comfort me.

  Isabel was particularly nice to us after that episode. I suppose she felt some responsibility with us for the catastrophe; I heard her say to the kitchen maid that those dratted Wyatt kids were on her mind. ‘And another any day now,’ said Alice; and then they whispered together. She gave us little treats, and encouraged us to have a picnic party of friends of our own class, and helped to make it go with a bang. Then, perhaps to demonstrate the difference between riff-raff like the Wyatts and well brought up inferiors, she asked little Ivy Tulloch to tea with us.

  Ivy was the only child of the head gardener at Lady Bigham-Onslow’s, impressive neighbour, and Mrs. Tulloch and Isabel were dearest friends. Isabel had tried before to offer us little Ivy, but we had always vigorously rejected her. This time we felt our position shaky, and dared not protest.

  She was a fat bland child with bulbous cheeks and forehead, and we despised her prim smug booted legs and her pigtails bound with glossy bows. She had far more and smarte
r frocks than we, and insertion and lace frills to the legs of all her knickers; whereas we had only one ornamental pair apiece, for parties. She was kept carefully from low companions, never played in the lane, and was made ever such a fuss of by Her Ladyship.

  The arrangement made without consulting us was that she should trot along about four o’clock for a nice game with us, and that her Mummy should pop in after tea to have a chat with Isabel before taking her home.

  Four o’clock came and went: no Ivy. We began to feel hopeful: she had forgotten the day, perhaps, or been struck down by measles. At five we ate the doughnuts bought to tempt her dainty appetite. By five-thirty we had totally erased her distasteful image from our minds, and were agreeably immersed in our own pastimes. Then we heard the back door bell ring sharply: and Isabel, exclaiming: ‘There!’ went rustling down at top speed. Shortly afterwards, two pairs of footsteps returned, two voices sounded in the passage, engaged in emphatic thrust and counterthrust. We recognised the refined and breathy tones of Mrs. Tulloch, and the punctuating gasps and exclamations of Isabel. They went into the night nursery, hissed together for a little longer, then flung open the dividing door and descended upon us.

  A flaming spot stood in either cheek of Mrs. Tulloch, and there was a look about her, we saw it at a glance, of the mother fowl defending its young. She kept saying: ‘Don’t give it another thought, Isabel, I beg. I wouldn’t want to cause any trouble, not when it’s children’; and Isabel kept repeating that she never would have credited it, never, the wickedness.

  Chaotically, the facts emerged. Stunned, we pieced them together. They were these. Little Ivy, dressed in her best and feeling a wee bit shy, bless her, but innocently trusting to be met as arranged by Isabel at the back door, had come tripping across the fields at the appointed time. But at the turn of the lane, who should be lurking in wait, pressed up against a small wooden side door in our garden wall—who but Chrissie? And then what happened? Chrissie Wyatt had had the downright demon wickedness to declare to Ivy she wasn’t wanted inside, that she, Chrissie, had been specially posted there by us to tell her so; that it was horrible, awful in there anyway, a kind of torture chamber: nobody was allowed to talk, not even to smile at the tea-table; and Ivy had best run along home quick before anybody appeared to beckon her within. So what was left for Ivy but to hurry back home to her Mummy, frightened out of her little wits, sobbing her little heart out?

  ‘Wait till I catch her!’ muttered Isabel. ‘I’ll give her not even smile at tea. When I think! … Cuddling up to me so loving and … The spitefulness! It only shows … And I hope it’ll be a lesson. If I hadn’t got your word for it, Doll, I’d never have credited it, never. Who’d ever fancy a ’uman child could have the artfulness, the wicked artfulness—a scrap of a thing like her. The downright impudence! Makes you think she can’t be right in her head …’

  ‘The devil’s in her, if you ask me,’ said Mrs. Tulloch; adding sweetly: ‘You said they came to tea last week, did you, dear?’

  ‘It wasn’t my doing,’ said Isabel. ‘They got round their father, as per usual.’

  ‘Ah well! We all know a certain gentleman’s kind heart. But as I always say, it’s all very well. Right’s right, when all’s said and done.’

  ‘Ah, and it’s easy to be soft when it’s others have the trouble. That’s where it is.’

  ‘And some will always take advantage, that’s one thing certain.’

  Together they went on intoning judgment and sentence on Chrissie.

  ‘Makes you wonder where she’ll finish up.’

  ‘Mark my words, if she goes on like this, she’ll come to a bad end.’

  ‘It’s the bringing-up—you can’t wonder really.’

  ‘Bringing-up it may be, but I always say when a nature’s bad, bad it is. You can’t alter it. Be your station high or low. Many’s the time I’ve passed the remark to Tulloch.’

  Meanwhile we were dumb, aghast. Had we been told that Chrissie had laid a charge of dynamite at our gate and blown up Ivy, the shock could not have been greater. We had to agree, it only showed, we must let it be a lesson. Yet we could not regret the catastrophe to Ivy, or feel drawn towards the injured parent, in whose strokes at the Wyatts we apprehended a back-hander at ourselves; and whom in any case we were debarred from liking owing to her squint and her manner—genteel, patronising, obsequious.

  ‘Now take my advice, dear, and put your foot down another time. If you’ll excuse me mentioning it, right’s right, and it’s best to start as you mean to go on. I dare say it’s not my place, but they hadn’t ever ought to have set foot, dear, and you know it—though far be it from me to blame you. Still—they’re not exactly a clean lot, are they? You wouldn’t want yours to pick up anything, would you?—not with their mother away.’

  With that she rose and adjusted her hat and said she mustn’t stop. She’d only popped along because she knew we’d be worried.

  ‘I left the poor mite sitting on her Daddy’s knee, but she’ll be fretting for me if I don’t get back. Oh, Tulloch, he was upset! You know what men are—he thinks the world of her, it’s only natural. I don’t know what he didn’t want to do. But I said, now we don’t want to make trouble, not when it’s children. And don’t go worrying Her Ladyship with it, I said. Her Ladyship takes ever such an interest in Ivy, you know, always has done since she was a mite in a pram. I said, you’ll only upset her—there’s no need to go worrying her.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure I hope,’ said Isabel, with a stony glance at us, ‘you’ll find it in you to let her come another day instead. I’m sure the girls are as upset as me to think it should have occurred.’

  ‘Thanks, dear,’ said Mrs. Tulloch, with a sort of repudiating graciousness. ‘Perhaps later on when she’s over the shock. She’s such a sensitive wee soul—you never know what a shock like that will do to a sensitive child. Bless her, she’d got herself quite worked up. “Oo, Mummy,” she said to me when I was changing her, “will they have rosebuds on their frocks like me?” The things children think of! “Shall I take my new dolly?” she said. “Will they have some big dollies there?—bigger than mine?”’ She uttered a tender deprecating laugh, and cast a glance round our doll-less nursery. ‘Well, ta ta, dear. Now don’t brood about it, I do beg.’

  ‘I’ve a good mind,’ said Isabel, ‘to go down this very minute and speak my mind to her mother.’

  ‘Now, dear, take my advice and don’t do no such thing. You never know what sort of answer you’ll get from that sort of person. She might turn reelly rude, and then you’d regret you ever gave her the opening.’

  ‘You may be right,’ said Isabel. ‘Still—’

  Still—later on that evening, after we were in bed, Isabel stood by our bedroom window, fingering the curtain, looking out over the garden, arrested in an unfamiliar pose, a quietness that suggested brooding, almost dejection. From this window, the chimney of the Wyatts’ cottage was just visible between the poplars. Flat on our pillows, we watched her. Suddenly we heard her say quietly: ‘It was jealousy.’ She was speaking to herself. Then: ‘Poor little beggar.’ She heaved a deep sigh, shook her head. ‘Ah well, what you can’t cure, you’d best let alone.’

  She bade us good-night with customary briskness, and went away.

  Next morning, I wanted to go to the creek to hunt for some particular water plant for my collection of pressed wild flowers. Short of making a long and dreary detour through the village, it meant passing the Wyatts’ cottage; and the idea of running into a group of them was painfully embarrassing. But Sylvia lent me moral courage, and, declaring that since we obviously could not avoid the lane for the rest of our lives it was best to bare our bosoms at once for the encounter, offered to accompany me. We went together down the lane, and the way was clear. The cottage looked deserted. But when we came back about lunch time they were all there, every one of them, in a huddle by their gate. The next to youngest sat in his s
oap box, the baby lolled its head on Maudie’s shoulder. There was no movement among them except the slight turn of their heads as they watched us approach.

  ‘Hallo,’ we said sheepishly, not looking at any particular one of them.

  ‘’Allow.’

  As we passed, Horace croaked suddenly:

  ‘Our mum’s gorn to the ’ospital. She’s bad. The amb’lance come for her.’

  ‘Last night,’ said Norman, ‘our dad ’ad to go for the doctor. Then the amb’lance come.’

  ‘’Er ’ead was bad,’ said Alfie.

  One of the younger ones piped:

  ‘Make it better at the ’ospital. Then she come back.’

  ‘Our dad’s gone on ’is bike to see ’er,’ said Horace.

  We said we hoped she would be better soon. We could feel the after-quivers of catastrophe reverberating through the group, but we could not think of anything else to say. Maudie had not spoken a word. Awkward, wishing to make a friendly gesture, I approached her. I had a weakness for holding babies, and though I could not feel drawn to this one, still it was a baby; and I asked her timidly if she thought it would come to me.

  ‘’E’s all right,’ she said indifferently, scarcely glancing at me. Impossible to believe that this was the same Maudie whose stoat-like concentration had so weighed upon me. Then I heard her mutter, in the voice of a sleep-walker: ‘We got enough babies, anyway.’

  Then, as if accosting a stranger to ask the way, she looked at me with a faint contraction between the eyes and said ungraciously:

  ‘Where is the ’ospital, then?’